A VERY CLOONEY CHRISTMAS

George Clooney to Guest-Star In a Downton Abbey Christmas Sketch

This past May, it was reported that George Clooneywhisked his fiancéeAmal Alamuddin to Highclere Castle—better known as Downton Abbey—for a surprise tour of Lady Mary’s Yorkshire manse. And today it appears that the Oscar winner and humanitarian revisited Highclere Castle on a top-secret mission.

To mend Lady Mary’s broken heart? To hand-deliver a bottle of Casamigos tequila to the Dowager Countess? (“You’re going to need this to get through another season of your son’s mismanagement of the estate.”) To personally mentor Edith on the arts of Self-Confidence and Getting What You Want Out of Your Love Life and Career? To smuggle Lady Isobel off the property in an Ocean’s Eleven-style heist that ensures Downton viewers never have to waste time on her snoozy story arcs again? (We wish.)

No, according to E! and The Telegraph, the actor visited Highclere Castle to make a special-guest appearance in a Downton Abbey-themed sketch that will appear during the overseas charity telethon, Text Santa, which will air in the U.K. around the holidays.

What does this mean for us exactly? The actor, regrettably, will not pop up on a future episode of Downton Abbey as a legit character, like Lord Clooningham, a dashing love interest whose parlor tricks endear him to everyone in the household except the ever-suspecting Dowager.

Instead, he will appear during a one-off Downton-set sketch that we stateside viewers will have to view secondhand on YouTube. (From videos we’ve seen online of past Text Santa sketches, these videos seem to be cheeky and have a certain level of Love Actually holiday campiness to them.) It is not known if Clooney appears in period-appropriate costume, which (if any) Downton Abbey actors he interacts with, and whether or not he gets a chance to swing downstairs and tell Bates that his character is getting a little too creepy these days.

The Telegraph reports that the appearance has been confirmed by an ITV spokesperson, who understandably wants to keep details of the surprise appearance under wraps.